Drivers in 9 Dallas area cities among state's worst in insurance study

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Kye R. Lee/Staff Photographer

Denise Washburn's 2013 Dodge Challenger was rear-ended by a car traveling 40 mph in Arlington, a city cited by an Allstate Insurance Co. study for its bad drivers. Washburn is still dealing with injuries from the crash.

Nine cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have more accident-prone motorists than anywhere else in Texas, says a new insurance company study.

Garland drivers ranked as the most dangerous, almost 50 percent more likely to get into a crash than the national average. Those in Arlington, Dallas and Mesquite weren’t much better.

Police in Garland swatted aside the traffic study, saying it was too limited and haphazard. But experts say they aren’t surprised large, fast-growing cities in Texas are so dangerous.

The chief causes: too many people, not enough room.

“Once you start putting more vehicles in an area, and the road isn’t engineered to handle that amount of traffic, it creates more opportunities for crashes,” said Troy Walden, a researcher at Texas A&M University’s Center for Transportation Safety.

Allstate Insurance Co. released the tally last month of nearly 200 cities and their safety records, based on the weighted average of data over two years from any collision that resulted in a property damage claim. Allstate covers about 10 percent of insured motorists nationwide.

Three South Texas cities — Brownsville, Laredo and McAllen — had the state’s top safety record.

Drivers in Brownsville were among the nation’s best, about 21 percent less likely than the national average to have a wreck. They go almost 13 years between accidents.

But a batch of cities with heavy traffic and roadway construction projects put D-FW high on the spotty-driver list.

The clustered nature of North Texas suburbs also may be contributing to the danger.

“Even the satellite areas are dense cities with higher traffic and more potential for accidents than you have around the single cities in South Texas,” Walden said.

Denise Washburn, 38, a marketing specialist from Waxahachie, still is dealing with injuries from a crash in April.

She was stopped at a red light in South Arlington when another driver slammed into her new Dodge Challenger at 40 mph, she said.

“You wouldn’t think being rear-ended would be a big deal,” she said.

She was knocked out, diagnosed at the hospital with a severe concussion.

A few weeks later, she passed out several times. “I still wasn’t right,” she said. “I had trouble communicating.”

A neurologist found a brain injury that requires anti-seizure medication that she will have to take for at least the next two years. She also takes steroid injections for a ruptured disk in her neck.

“It blows my mind. It wasn’t a high-speed, highway kind of wreck. But my bell had been rung, for sure,” she said.

The rear-ender occurred in a part of Arlington with dense development and traffic — two factors that hurt that city’s safety record. Its drivers are almost 36 percent more likely to be in a crash than the average motorist, Allstate said.

The average American goes about 10 years between accidents, the company said.

North Texas is growing rapidly. And in fast-growing cities, it can be hard to update roads quickly to meet the increased demand, said A&M’s Walden.

“Projects take a while to come to completion, and generally, by the time they do, it’s time to consider changes again,” he said.

Construction risks

That construction can complicate traffic patterns and put more large vehicles on the road, creating more risks.

Last week, an elderly Trophy Club couple was killed on LBJ Freeway, upended because of a massive redo. A dump truck hit a car near Marsh Lane, jumped the concrete barrier and crushed a second car on the other side.

Walden also said drivers may be too distracted by their gadgets.

“Are people paying attention to their driving tasks or are they on their cellphones or playing with the radio?” he said.

Allstate compares the frequency of accidents drivers have with the national average over a two-year period in cities with populations of more than 50,000. It makes no distinction on whether the person reporting the accident caused it or not.

The insurer said Garland drivers had an average of 6.8 years between accidents, about 46 percent higher than the national average.

Those in Dallas went about 7.4 years between collisions, about 36 percent higher than the average driver. Mesquite, Grand Prairie, Irving, McKinney, Plano and Frisco ranged from 31 percent to 26 percent.

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